Learning about Jhumpa Lahiri’s biography actually helps in understanding where the basis of the story Interpreter of Maladies came from. It could be recognized that with her background as a the daughter of Indian immigrants who was born in London, she was able to see the realities that covered the situation of social minorities in a foreign land. Through noting how she lived with specific differences compared to people she grew up with in her neighborhood, it could be understood why her story on the Interpreter of Maladies took a stand point in introducing what the real life of the minorities is all about.
Embarrassed about specific things about herself, especially those matters that make her Indian, Lahiri tried to escape from her cultural roots and hope to find a proper place in the English society. Nevertheless, as she grows into maturity, she begins to realize that when it comes to being accepted, personal acceptance of one’s self is much more important than having realized that others are actually ready to accept a person.
In her story, she makes it a point that she highlights the plight of immigrants like herself. She placed a part of herself into each of her characters, making the agonies and the troubles experienced by the main characters rather real and relatively relatable to. This is the reason why the reading itself won a Pulitzer Prize in 2000. The real value of the story she has written lies on the fact that it exposes the reality about the lives of the immigrants and how they are being treated in the society, With such approach to discussion, Lahiri is able to capture the attention of the public readers both in London and even around the globe.
References
Majithia, Sheetal. "Of Foreigners and Fetishes: A Reading of Recent South Asian American Fiction." Samar 14: The South Asian American Generation (Fall/Winter 2001): 52–53.
Roy, Pinaki. “Postmodern Diasporic Sensibility: Rereading Jhumpa Lahiri’s Oeuvre”. Indian English Fiction: Postmodern Literary Sensibility. Ed. Bite, V. New Delhi: Authors Press, 2012 pp. 90–109.
